Golden Globes 2016: The Revenant sweep could lead Leonardo DiCaprio to Oscar glory

It was a big night for The Revenant yesterday in Hollywood, as the Golden Globes 2016 were handed out. Alejandro G Inarritu’s survival drama was the ceremony’s biggest winner, scooping the gongs for Best Picture – Drama, Best Actor – Drama for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Director for Inarritu. Given the film’s Globes success, speculation will inevitably turn to whether the film can similarly triumph at the Oscars next month. After four nominations over the course of two decades, could this finally be DiCaprio’s year?

Few people had The Revenant earmarked for such a comprehensive sweep. Conventional wisdom suggested that Tom McCarthy’s journalism drama Spotlight would win the night’s biggest prizes, but it seems as if that film’s lack of nominations in the acting categories cost it dearly.

The same is likely to be true with the Academy, who are set to unveil their shortlists this week. Historically, films without nominations across all of the major categories struggle to score victory in the Best Picture field on Oscar night.

The Revenant is not going to have any of those problems, with nominations likely to be spread across the three categories in which it won at the Golden Globes. It will also put up a strong showing in the technical categories, with Inarritu’s policy of using only natural light to shoot likely to lead Emmanuel Lubezski to his third consecutive Best Cinematography statuette. It would not be a surprise to see a handful of other technical gongs go the way of The Revenant, bolstering its case for Best Picture.

Leonardo DiCaprio won the Best Actor Golden Globe for The Revenant

The real question, though, is whether Leo can finally climb the mountain. DiCaprio has been chasing the elusive Oscar with a series of daring and exciting recent roles in films like The Wolf of Wall Street. The golden baldie has eluded him thus far, but he is already building up a real head of steam and, following his Golden Globes triumph, he must now be considered the clear frontrunner.

It’s not necessarily that The Revenant is a better performance than those others, but the competition is far lesser. In 2014, DiCaprio was up against Chiwetel Ejiofor and Matthew McConaughey for their powerhouse performances in 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club respectively. This year, Leo’s toughest competition is likely Eddie Redmayne, but the Brit’s turn in The Danish Girl has been overshadowed by the controversy of the film’s subject matter and the consensus of mediocrity from critics.

DiCaprio will also be given a boost by the fact that his work on The Revenant had received an enormous amount of publicity before anyone in the critical fraternity even saw the film. Stories spoke of DiCaprio enduring freezing cold, sleeping inside animal carcasses and eating raw bison liver. These tales of artistic endurance can only help DiCaprio’s case, providing Academy voters with a clear reason to vote for him in a year that has otherwise refused to yield a clear favourite for Best Actor.

The Golden Globes are usually a decent predictor for the Oscars and, this year, they’ve given a pretty clear indication of where the wide open race is likely to end up. The Revenant, with its brutal subject matter and newsworthy production, is in pole position to scoop all of the biggest prizes on Oscar night.

And for Leonardo DiCaprio, it looks like 2016 could be the year.

Do you think Leonardo DiCaprio will win the Best Actor Oscar for his work on The Revenant? What do you think of the Goldem Globes 2016 results in general? Let me know in the comments section.

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